[HlessClaudesman]

I think you're right about stickyness up to a point.

Cultural defaults seem unchangeable but then suddenly everyone knows, that's everyone knows, that OpenAI is passé.

OpenAI has a real chance to blow their lead, ending up in a hellish no-man's land by trying to please everyone: Not cool enough for normies, not safe enough for business, not radical enough for techies. Pick a lane or perish.

Not owning their own infrastructure, and being propped up by financial / valuation tricks are more red flags.

Being a first mover doesn't guarantee getting to the golden goose, remember MySpace.

[oblio]

> Being a first mover doesn't guarantee getting to the golden goose, remember MySpace.

MySpace, ICQ, Altavista, Dropbox, Yahoo, BlackBerry, Xerox Alto, Altair 8800, CP/M, WordStar, VisiCalc, the list is very long.

[mercer]

Hotmail is a good example too. I remember it being pretty ubiquitous, at least for the 'personal email' crowd, and it seemed implausible that people would give up on what was often their main email 'location' for another offering without being able to transfer their often important and personal stuff. then gmail came along.

[hackinthebochs]

The internet and the surrounding context changed so fast that it made little sense to cling to old email addresses made in the old context. Gmail represented the 'new internet' and old patterns became obsolete (less subversive, more mainstream/corporate). When there's a seismic shift in usage patterns that's when all bets are off regarding where everyone lands. Being the first mover means little here. If the way people interacted with AI underwent a massive shift, OpenAI would likely get left behind. The only safe bet is to invent your own killer.

[overgard]

Younger people might not realize or remember this, but when GMail came out it was HUGE. Like, I remember it was invite-only for a while and getting an invite was a really big deal. In retrospect that was some genius marketing by them (also just a way better product, at the time)

Also switching email was a lot easier back then. Nowadays if you're using gmail as an auth provider it's very hard to completely abandon an inbox without a lot of friction. Back then all your logins were separate anyway.

[FartyMcFarter]

Interesting point. I guess people liked the convenience of unlimited storage even more than they liked the convenience of keeping the same email address. In a way they traded one convenience for another.

[prawn]

Beyond that too, I would think that many people view a Hotmail account as an indicator that you're backwards or not serious in business.

I distinctly remember the shift to and then away from Altavista as well.

[lern_too_spel]

This took 8 years. HoTMaiL had a long time to become a competitive product, but it just blew it over the course of a decade. https://venturebeat.com/business/gmail-hotmail-yahoo-email-u...

[mister_mort]

Did Hotmail offer email redirection at that time? I can't remember whether that sort of thing that would make it easy to switch away was offered.

[croon]

I don't remember that detail, but I do remember most people not treating their inbox as an archive at the time. So there was less friction to switch to gmail, and more reason to do so due to the "real time" ticking storage amount of gmail, which then became an archive (again for most people).

[kergonath]

> I do remember most people not treating their inbox as an archive at the time.

Indeed. For me, the step was gmail. With its humongous 1GB of storage, that was the moment when I stopped having to delete stuff to save space. It’s funny because a lot of people I know who were already older at that point kept the habit of deleting emails, even today.

[shakow]

VisiCalc, CP/M, BlackBerry and Yahoo definitely got a golden goose; it's long after establishing their dominance that they failed at maintaining it.

[stingraycharles]

Isn’t that exactly what’s being discussed re: OpenAI? They seemed unstoppable a few years ago, but have lost quite a bit of reputation and their position of technical lead.

[shakow]

What I mean is that the one I cited were first movers that actually found a golden goose, then got ousted years/decades later for various reasons.

For now at least, OpenAI has not found a golden goose (i.e. made a lot of money) yet.

[wickedsight]

> have lost quite a bit of reputation

in the tech world, maybe. All my 'normie' friends are using ChatGPT though and have no concept of their reputation, nor intention of switching. Most people I know are hardly even aware of alternatives, even of Gemini, though everyone has a Google account.

I personally also use ChatGPT and have zero reason not to, currently. I might switch if they royally mess up, but everything they've messed up has been fixed within a day.

[XorNot]

But would they pay for it? That's the difference.

[famouswaffles]

More people pay for ChatGPT than any other Consumer AI service by far, and when ads rollout, it won't matter that much.

[stingraycharles]

My normie friends aren’t paying several hundred of $ a month on their services, though.

[Lorkki]

IBM owned literally the whole market on computers at a time when computing equipment was prohibitively expensive and centralised.

[oblio]

IBM was a special case, I'm not sure there were many markets so thoroughly cornered like IT was for about 3 decades. I guess telephone (AT&T) was similar.

[Lorkki]

I think there's similarity to the dynamic too. Not many instances have the means at this time to produce LLMs from scratch and operate them at scale.

[nixass]

> the list is very long

Tesla is lurking as well

[chasd00]

I guess it depends on what you mean by golden goose. MySpace sold for an insane amount of money at the time and it was basically one guy, “Tom”.

[onion2k]

Pick a lane or perish.

Literally every industry has examples of businesses that don't excel at anything and still do well enough to carry on. In fact, in most industries, it's actually hard to see any business that's clearly leading on any specific front because as soon as it becomes an obvious factor in gaining market share the competing businesses focus on that area as well.

[gmac]

Yeah. Vauxhall/Opel has always been my go-to example here. Their cars excel at nothing. They’re not especially stylish. Not the fastest or nicest to drive. Not unusually efficient. Not particularly reliable or guaranteed for a long period. By no means the cheapest. They don’t even achieve a sweet spot of averageness across all these things. Yet people have somehow carried on buying them over decades.

[nDRDY]

Jeremey Clarkson called the Astra "the most boring car ever made". I loved both of mine - they always got me and my stuff where I needed to be, and were easy to fix.

The last one, a 2007 model that has now moved on to my younger sibling, might be the last "simple" car.

[brookst]

First mover advantage: marketing logic or marketing legend: https://gtellis.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/pioneering-ad...